Radiation is one of the six crises that this Platform addresses; each one could annihilate civilization as we know it. Radiation could do so in either an acute or chronic manner. The acute effects would come from a major accident, miscalculation, or terrorist attack or an actual nuclear war. The chronic effects are killing by inducing cancers and other medical conditions.
Radiation exposure is of course related to the other five global threat scenarios. Radiation is interconnected as part of a nuclear war that would immediately kill millions from radiation. A nuclear bomb is not just a bigger better bomb but emits radiation that kills locally and at a distance over time. Because of its power, it would put dust and smoke into the stratosphere that would cause a decrease of the sun’s penetration. A “nuclear winter” would result, causing death of millions by famine. Some people suggest that nuclear power is “green” —even the answer to climate change. But nuclear power plants could be a target of terrorists using cyberwarfare or crashing an airliner into a reactor.
Radiation is like Yin and Yang. It has detrimental effects—causing cancers, etc. — but also beneficial effects, as in helping make diagnoses through X-rays and nuclear imaging and also in treating cancers. Ionizing radiation has the ability to break apart molecules like DNA. There are different types of ionizing radiation: alpha and beta are weak energy but potent if taken internally, while X-rays and gamma radiation have strong energy and can kill acutely people as well as cancers, or can be used externally in diagnosis.
There are several principles that apply to radiation in humans. Radiation accumulates in the body and acts over time. Even small doses of radiation can become significant if one is exposed to them all the time. Radiation comes from several sources: background (about one to three milliSieverts, although it can be higher in specific regions) that affects us all, such as from the sun, or the ground such as radon gas that is the number two cause of lung cancer in Canada. We are also exposed individually when we get an X-ray or fly in an airplane.
If a food source that has been contaminated with radiation is eaten, it is absorbed by the organism that devours it. Thus, radiation is concentrated up the food chain. We humans are at the top of the food chain. We thus concentrate radiation over time.
People vary in their susceptibility, with fetuses being the most vulnerable, then children and women.
Radiation affects rapidly dividing cells and these are the dividing quickly in fetuses and children. Timing is important. Just as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome occurs when alcohol is ingested at the time an embryo is developing, and cannabis may affect the developing brain of people younger than twenty five, radiation acts similarly on different age groups, inducing miscarriages, mutagenesis, or teratogenesis.
Radiation also affects specific organs, depending on the radioactive substance that is absorbed. Iodine 131 affects the thyroid, whereas strontium 90 is analogous to calcium and is taken up by bone and thus affects the bone marrow and blood.
Some people believe in a hypothesis called homesis that says that small doses of radiation may be beneficial in causing mutations that will stimulate the immune system and that some mutations may improve our species. This is held by very few non-medical people. As medical doctors, we believe that there is a linear graph such that even small amounts of radiation over time can be harmful. We should try to minimize our exposure.
Safety limits are designed by people and are dependent more on politics, to prevent panic of the masses as opposed to being based on science. Limits of radiation vary from country to country and even in local municipalities. It is set to vary, depending on the job that one does. It is allowed for workers in nuclear plants to receive up to 100 mSv. (MilliSeverts) per year, while the limit for the general population is ten mSv.
Here are the effects of acute radiation on humans: The effects vary with the size of the dose — amount of exposure to the radiation. With 50-100 mSv (milliSieverts), there are changes in blood chemistry. At 500 mSv, one develops nausea, and then fatigue, followed by vomiting at 700 mSv., followed by hair loss and then diarrhoea over the following 2-3 weeks, as the most rapidly dividing cells are affected first. At 1000 mSv. you start bleeding. At 4,000 mSv, there may be death in 2-3 months. At 10,000 mSv., there is death within 1-2 weeks with destruction of the intestinal system and bleeding. At 20,000 mSv., the neurologic system is affected resulting in loss of consciousness, and death within hours to a few days.
Here are the effects of chronic radiation on humans: miscarriages; mutagenic (changes in the genetic material, usually DNA but also RNA, leading to mutations such as Down’s syndrome), teratogenic (which disturbs the development of a fetus, resulting in congenital malformations that can be passed down to future generations); cancers such as leukaemia, thyroid, breast, brain, pancreas; hardening of the arteries, leading to strokes and heart attacks; cataracts; kidney damage; and acceleration of the overall ageing process.
We also have a gradation of severity of nuclear accidents; The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) rates the severity of accidents on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the worst; a major accident; (Chernobyl April 1986, and Fukushima March 2011). A level 6 serious accident was the Kyshtym disaster at the Mayak Chemical Combine in the Soviet Union in September 1957 at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant. Level 5, accidents with wider consequences, include Windscale fire at Sellafield on October 1957 in the United Kingdom, which caused a fire with graphite and uranium in a military air cooled reactor; the Three Mile Island on March 1979 nuclear power plant; Chalk River, December 1952, when the reactor core was damaged; and the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987 when a caesium chloride radiation source was taken from an abandoned hospital.
Please see also the following paper, which expands on the above summary:
This way to treat Hanford radioactive waste could save $210 billion. But is it safe enough?
Annette Cary | Tri-City Herald | 7 January 2021
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article248276995.html
“Grouting rather than glassifying a large amount of radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation could save taxpayers $73 billion to $210 billion, according to a new Department of Energy report.
Turning millions of gallons of waste into a concrete-like grout form also could cut 10 years off the time needed to treat radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks and permanently dispose of it, the DOE report estimated.”
Read more
DOE recently submitted a report to Congress on potential opportunities for different ways to treat waste now held at Hanford and other DOE nuclear sites.
The report was required three years ago by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to look at the feasibility, costs and cost savings of reclassifying high level radioactive waste to allow it to be treated and disposed of in ways not allowed for high level waste.
“Let’s trust the science and move forward,” said Washington state Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Richland, who has advocated for classifying some tank waste as low level waste to allow more efficient treatment.
The cost savings identified in the report “are a big step in the right direction, and would assist both DOE and its regulators in focusing on the mission of protecting those mist impacted — local citizens and tribal members,” said Richland Councilman Bob Thompson, chairman of Hanford Communities, a coalition of Hanford area local governments.
“We need the Hanford Site cleaned up, and I’m concerned that it will be very difficult to achieve given current cost estimates,” he said. “We should be exploring alternatives that can reduce costs and expedite the cleanup while maintaining safety and effectiveness.”
The latest cost estimate for the remaining environmental cleanup at the Hanford site, which was released two years ago, said taxpayers will need to spend $323 billion to $677 billion.
The 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
But Hanford Challenge, a Seattle-based watchdog group, found the report “shocking,” said its executive director, Tom Carpenter.
The report discusses reclassifying up to 80% of the 56 million gallons of Hanford tank waste to allow it to be stabilized in a concrete-like grout form, rather than vitrifying, or glassifying it.
That could open the door to grouting waste in tanks rather than emptying the tanks, Carpenter said.
RECLASSIFYING WASTE
Any waste produced when fuel irradiated at Hanford reactors was chemically processed to remove plutonium is classified as high level radioactive waste under U.S. law.
But internationally, waste classification is based not on how waste is produced as it is for high level waste in the United States, but on its radiological risk.
“It makes sense to me that we would manage and treat Hanford’s waste based on its physical characteristics, rather than how it was produced,” said David Reeploeg, the Tri-City Development Council vice president for federal programs.
Already much of the tank waste at Hanford, while by definition is high level, is referred to as low activity radioactive waste and managed as it if is low level rather than high level waste by agreement between the state of Washington and the federal government.
In 2019, DOE adopted a new policy that allows it to reclassify radioactive waste if it determines it does not exceed certain radionuclide concentrations for low level waste or does not need to be disposed of in a deep geological repository, such as the one proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
However, Congress has banned the new policy from being used in Washington state under the two most recent National Defense Authorization Acts.
High level waste can still be reclassified but under a more involved process that relies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The new DOE report to Congress stresses that reclassifying tank waste for grouting is not a proposal, only a look at potential opportunities.
Before any action is taken DOE would need to gather more data, do more analyses and discuss the proposed change with those interested in Hanford, the report said.
GROUTING TANK WASTEThe report looks at the possibility of reclassifying much of the waste stored in underground tanks in part of central Hanford, the 200 West Area, and then grouting it for disposal rather than turning it into stable glass logs at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction.
Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, split between the 200 East Area and the 200 West Area, which are about seven miles apart.
The underground tanks include 149 single shell tanks which are prone to leaking. They are being emptied into 27 newer double-shell tanks for more secure storage until the waste can be treated for permanent disposal.
Most of the double-shell tanks — all but three — are in the 200 East Area.
In addition to the three double-shell tanks, the 200 West Area also has 83 of the Hanford site’s single-shell tanks, some of them with a capacity of 1 million gallons.
Grouting 80% of the 200 West Area tank waste would allow the waste to be treated in a less-complex, lower temperature and lower risk method, the DOE report said.
The vitrification plant heats waste and glass forming materials to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a stable glass form.
Some of the cost savings of grouting could come from not having to expand the vitrification plant, according to the DOE report.
The plant was never planned to be large enough to treat all of the low-activity tank waste at Hanford.
Grouting large amounts of the 200 West Area tank waste also could eliminate the need to replace or repair seven miles of cross-site transfer line, according to the report.
The pipe would move the waste from the 200 West Area to the 200 East Area for storage in double-shell tanks and treatment at the vitrification plant, which is in the 200 East Area.
Grouting the waste also could allow the waste to be sent off of Hanford for disposal, leaving less waste permanently disposed in the Eastern Washington nuclear reservation, the DOE report said.
Now the low-activity waste glassified at the vitrification plant is planned to be disposed of in a lined landfill in central Hanford.
But the state of Washington objects to waste being buried there unless it is vitrified or can be shown to be as protective of the environment as glass.
HANFORD GROUTING TESTDOE has grouted three gallons of radioactive waste in a test, using an engineered grout form that is protective of the environment, it said.
The waste was sent from Hanford to nearby Perma-Fix Environmental Solutions in Richland to be encapsulated in a specialized grout. It then was sent to a Waste Control Specialists disposal cell in Texas that was built for low-level radioactive waste from federal government sites.
Congress has already appropriated money to continue the demonstration of the grouting project on more waste, said Gary Petersen, president of Northwest Energy Associates, a nonprofit, Hanford advocacy group formed by Tri-Cities area business leaders.
He questions why the second phase of the test, which would involve grouting 2,000 gallons, has not started.
The 200 West tanks are a great place to demonstrate the grouting project because DOE currently does not seem to have a plan for treating the waste in tanks that is far from the vitrification plant, he said.
HANFORD CHALLENGE CONCERNS
However, Hanford Challenge is skeptical that it is practical to grout millions of gallons of waste and ship it off site, saying the more likely outcome of reclassifying so much tank waste would be to grout the waste within the tanks and leave it in the ground at Hanford.
The grout could fail within a matter of decades, he said, which would put more groundwater at Hanford at risk of contamination.
Although reclassifying tank waste is not currently allowed in Washington state, it is being used successfully already at DOE’s Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site, Brown pointed out.
The first use of DOE’s new reclassification policy resulted in eight gallons of recycled wastewater from vitrification at Savannah River being grouted and sent to the Waste Control Specialists repository in Texas.
Just as reclassification of waste was done at Savannah River, it “can be successfully utilized in a safe manner as well at Hanford,” Brown said.